A Dream of Red Mansions, in Three Volumes

Complete in three volumes. Beautiful color plates by Tai Tun-Pang. "Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Story of the Stone, or Chronicles of the Stone is one of the masterpieces of Chinese fiction. It was composed sometime in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. Its authorship is attributed to Cáo Xue(qín (Cao Zhan). The novel is usually grouped with three other pre-modern Chinese works of fiction, collectively known as the Four Great Classical Novels. Of these, Dream of the Red Chamber is often taken to be the zenith of Chinese classical fiction. The novel has been translated into 20 different languages either in abridged version, such as German, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, or in complete version, such as Japanese, Korean, English, French, Spanish and Russian. There are two craters on asteroid 433 Eros named after the novel's fictional characters, Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. The last 40 chapters of this 120-chapter novel are of questionable authenticity. Cao Xueqin wrote the first 80 chapters, but died before the novel saw publication. It is believed that the novel is semi-autobiographical, mirroring the fortunes of Cao Xueqin's own family. It was intended to be a memorial to the women Cao knew in his youth: friends, relatives, and servants, as the author details in the first chapter. The novel itself is a detailed, episodic record of the lives of the extended Jia Clan, made up of two branches, the Ning-guo and Rong-guo Houses, which occupies two large adjacent family compounds in the Qing capital, Beijing. Their ancestors were made Dukes, and at the novel's start the two houses were still one of the most illustrious families in the capital. Originally extremely wealthy and influential, with a female member made an Imperial Concubine, the Clan eventually fell into disfavour with the Emperor, and had their mansions raided and confiscated. The novel is a charting of the Jias' fall from the height of their prestige, centering around some 30 main characters and over 400 minor ones. The story is prefaced with supernatural Taoist and Buddhist overtones. A sentient Stone, abandoned by the Goddess Nüwa when she mended the heavens, enters the mortal realm after begging a Taoist priest and Buddhist monk to bring it to see the world. The main character, Jia Baoyu, is the adolescent heir of the family, apparently the reincarnation of the Stone (the most reliable Jiaxu manuscript however has the Stone and Jia Baoyu as two separate, though related, entities). In that previous life he had a relationship with a flower, who is incarnated now as Baoyu's sickly cousin, the emotional Lin Daiyu. However, he is predestined in this life, despite his love for Daiyu, to marry another cousin, Xue Baochai. The novel follows this love triangle against the backdrop of the family's declining fortunes. The novel is remarkable not only in its huge cast of characters over 400 in all, most of whom are female and its psychological scope, but also in its precise and detailed observations of the life and social structures of 18th-century China.The novel, written in Vernacular Chinese and not Classical Chinese, is one of works which establishes the legitimacy of the vernacular idiom. Its author is well versed in Classical Chinese with tracts written in erudite semi-wenyan and Chinese poetry. The novel's conversations are written in a vivid Beijing Mandarin dialect which was to become the basis of modern spoken Chinese, with influences from Nanjing Mandarin (where Cao's family lived in the early 1700s). The novel contains nearly 30 characters which could be considered major, and hundreds of minor ones. Cao centers the novel on Jia Baoyu, the male protagonist, and the female relations around him, at one point intending to call the book The Twelfth Beauties of Jinling. "Also known as Hong Lou Meng, this is arguably China's greatest literary masterpiece. A chronicle of a noble family in the eighteenth century; but the splendor of enchanting gardens, pleasure pavilions, and daily life of the most sophisticated refinements hides the realities of decay and self-destruction."